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Comment by cortesoft | Hacker News Reader

I am not a Costco member for a few reasons.

The biggest one is that the parking lots at the nearby ones are CRAZY. Always packed, and even worse on weekends. They are so bad, in fact, that I even avoid the streets NEAR the Costco, because they back up. And I live in Los Angeles, where I expect bad parking and traffic... this is another level.

Also, I am just getting so used to ordering everything online. We get all our household items via amazon subscriptions (toilet paper, paper towels, dish detergent, etc)... so nice not having to ever think about those things and they just show up when we need them. I can't see myself going back to shopping at stores myself for those things.

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Like Yogi Berra said, no one goes to Costco anymore. It’s too crowded.

I think my comment is being misinterpreted to be reasons why I don't think costco will succeed... I was just commenting the reasons I personally don't shop at Costco, as a counter to the glowing review in the article. There are reasons not mentioned in the article as to why it isn't for everyone.

that's cool and all. but you don't understand how much the membership pays for itself with just gas alone

Right now my Costco has gas 50c less than any place around me

How does that work? From what I’ve heard, gas stations don’t get anywhere near 50 cents of profit per gallon. Even with massive scale and logistics I would be surprised that they can pull that off.

In my area Costco gas is usually the cheapest, but it's not always the cheapest by amounts like 50 cents. Its usually more on the order of 20 cents cheaper. The next cheapest stations share some similarities with Costco though -- they all tend to be unbranded gas stations. These don't usually have the agreements that branded stations have, where they have to buy a certain % of their supply from the brands refineries. So Costco tends to be buying the cheapest gas available at the time, has no brand-name overhead, and on top of that, purposely keeps their profit low to get more people joining. Another thing that Costco does, not just with gas but with everything, is they only accept their partnered credit cards. Their merchant fees are likely much lower, and as Costco does, they just pass that onto you.

So Costco is paying less, and keeping less (if any) profit. The net result is that their gas is appreciably cheaper.

I don’t know where they get it from, but Costco gas is supposedly same quality as other branded gas stations:

https://toptiergas.com/licensed-brands/

Oh man, I would pay more than that to avoid the parking lot. It would take an extra 30 minutes to get gas there.

And in our case, we already have electric cars anyway.

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